Another Email Scam (gmail)

@bomb2060 I agree, Gmail has the best filters for sorting out spam mails and lets very few reach to your inbox but if that mail reached to your inbox that is matter of great concern. As far captchas are concerned, I do not trust them a bit because to me they sound the greatest tools in the hands of hackers. However, one should be extra careful once you notice suspicious mails in your inbox.

 

I've always been aware of such scams and never bother opening spam mails at all. I simply delete them from my spam box and on my regular inbox. One thing that's common among them is that they don't know my name and they simply address me using my email address. Sometimes, though, hackers can be innovative. The email of one of our suppliers in a previous company I've been with must have been hacked and the hacker was able to obtain access to my email and name. I would sometimes receive email with my name as the sender. I got curious and opened the email but never clicked on anything. I noticed that the other recipients of the email were former co-workers who also had dealings with the supplier.

 

Not necessarily. I used a specific email to sign up to CP Gallery which was a site where you blog and get revenue based on views. After it shut down, I was bombarded with emails that addressed me in the given name I had made up for that site alone. That's how I knew it was that site that has sold on or passed on my information.

You never actually know, because I also worked for a company that had a mailing list who automatically sold on the emails and addresses to third parties as a source of income. As you can never trace them, you won't know who to blame. I told the company this was unethical and they said they needed the revenue and no one would ever find out it was them.

 

I hope everything will be fine for you. I have not receive such emails with Gmail, but when I checked out the spam folder sometimes, I can see a lot emails with title like this. I guess Gmail has filtered those suspicious emails quite well, but I am not sure why this has not been filtered out.

 

@Theo, I hope CP gallery is an isolated case. Sometimes, email can be guessed, since the sole email that I use for Paypal payments have some spam in them, mostly products for sexual enhancement. How much does selling an email cost? It seems cheap for $149 based on what I saw here: emaillist-sale.com/buy-email-lists/

 

You should really be careful on whatever you clicking online! Hackers are very pro these days. They can put almost any malware to almost everything and they can ruin your life specially if we are talking about bank accounts. @.@

 

@kaka135 Gmail has a policy to not to filter mails which come by the name of users but if you mark them as spam they take special care to filter out each such mail. The spammers in this case took the advantage of gmail's filter policy otherwise as you said this email would have landed in spam folder. Yes, check you spam folder some times as you might see some 'not spam' mails there.

 

So true Ray1.

 

Since I have an iPad, I do not have to worry about viruses and even about being hacked, at least not like someone who still has a Windows based computer or other device has to be concerned. I do have to watch the emails that come in, however, and if they tell me I have won some prize, or my bank account info needs updating, or anything along that line, which looks suspicious to me, then I immediately delete it.
Pretty much my spam filter gets rid of most of these emails; but occasionally one of them will make it through, and I have to delete it.
There are just so many online scams going on nowadays, and it seems like people are thinking up new ones all of the time.

 

There is this site I was about registering with at first I didn't quite understand how it works. Having gone some way I learnt before one can earn on the site you must allow it's extension on your browser. I don't think I trust the site enough to do that. Besides, I've gathered some malicious extensions can lead to malware. That way the key to one's sensitive information online could be hijacked by scammers.

 

Thank you for usefull and important information

 

I have just come across a new small job site which is so very similar to Microworkers but the job it has on offer and the requirement of site for payment purpose make me think the site is trying to scam or planning something big to cheat its members. I will not open the name today but I will warn users to be careful if a site asks you to submit your passport/government document like passport etc with your photo on it as proof of your ID.

 

These type of emails normally go straight into my spam box so I don't get to see them. I know what I have ordered so I would only open an email from that particular company.

The best thing is to stick to secure sites when purchasing anything online and that should help to prevent making this kind of mistake.

 

Sometimes they send these to see if there is any response, so then they know it's an active email address (as many give fake ones or ones that have expired) and that the details maybe correct. I'm not a baddie so I don't know what they are thinking, but I have heard that fraudsters often check the details first to see if they are valid before they do other stuff.

 

That puzzles me sometimes when a site begin to request for too many personal information just to sign up. They would ask government identity document, address age and others. The most worrying part some of these sites are yet to gain that reputation and trust to be given sensitive info. I try to check them up online and if I am not convinced about their reputation I don't use such sites.

 

@tonyb That was exactly my point when I mentioned a small jobs site recently started in an Asian country which asked for too many ID proofs including real photo, passport, any other government document with real photo and residential address which sounds a bit tricky. One can play lot many tricks online with your real ID.

 

Any updates OP? IS everything alright with your PC and/or bank accounts?

 

I decided to create a new email address because my 14 year old email address had been spammed by scams a lot.It saves me more time now with my new email because it is spam free. I also have a separate email for free samples.